The present invention relates to firearm magazines and, more particularly, to a stretchable band used to identify types of ammunition loaded in the magazine and used to identify the owner of the firearm magazine.
Ammunition magazines for rifles or other long arms often appear to be virtually identical. Unmarked or inadequately marked ammunition magazines left in storage or when used at a firing range, or when actually used in the field, can lead to misidentification of the load in the magazine and/or the owner of the magazine. This may result in tragic or even fatal consequences, such as when the magazine contains ammunition that my damage or even destroy the barrel, and injure or kill the firearm user. Many identical rifle magazines can be loaded with several different types of ammunition. This has lead to many firearms accidents, caused by having the wrong ammunition in the magazine. As documented by the National Rifle Association, firing the wrong ammunition in a rifle could result in injury or death to the operator and/or bystanders. https://www.nrablog.com/articles/2016/9/avoiding-the-300blk-ar15-kaboom/.
Also many firearms with suppressors attached require sub-sonic ammunition in order to keep the sound level low enough so as to not need hearing protection. Sub-sonic ammunition, once loaded in the magazine, looks identical to super-sonic ammunition. At this date and time, once a magazine is loaded, the common way to know what ammunition is in the magazine and who owns the magazine is to use colored tape, or to put a colored mark on the magazine base plate, or to employ homemade stickers, markings using colored ink or pencil, and similar improvisational systems that can either be easily removed or marked over, fall off, not be seen from the side of the magazine, or unaccountably disappear and leave a debris-catching residue on the magazine.
As can be seen, there is a need for an improvement in identifying the type of ammunition in a firearm magazine and the owner of that magazine.